Spark plug shot out of the head tonight
 

Was home after a nice calm cruise (never went above 3,000RPM), and I hear a loud pop as I'm coming to a stop and my idle became rough. I knew it was bad. I get home and pop the hood while the car was on and noticed one of the coilpacks was shaking violently along with the horrible knocking noise it was making. I shut the motor off, and I pulled off the coilpack, followed by the sparkplug. This is what I saw:

http://i465.photobucket.com/albums/r...281/allbad.jpg

http://i465.photobucket.com/albums/r...81/allbad2.jpg

The sparkplug shot out and tore the coilpack boot... The threads don't look too warped so I'm hoping the threads in the head are fine... However, I'm taking it to Ford tomorrow as the motor is still under the 3 year warranty (had a new motor installed in Spring '08, only has 29k miles on it now), so whatever happened should be covered. I hope there is no serious damage to the head... I don't want to be without my car for a long time again. It's too bad this happened, especially on a new engine. I think I just have bad luck with this car... I was all excited to take her for a cruise tonight. :( Hopefully it'll all work out fine.

Other things to note:

-They are Motorcraft double platinum sparkplugs that I installed myself almost a year ago and torqued down properly to spec
-This happened on my way home from Ford after having my oil, trans fluid, and rear diff fluid changed (I'm not at all insinuating that they somehow sabotaged my car, which I know is not the case. The coincidence was just kinda funny)

Anyways, just thought I'd vent a bit. Has this happened to any of you guys?

They may not cover that FYI. Because you installed them yourself and did not have a Ford dealership do it, they can say you did it wrong. If you did in-fact torque them down to spec, thats extremely rare that it did pop out. Terrible luck man, hope everything works out for you.

only the last 2-3 threads are damaged. looks like maybe the plug started backing out over time and when it got down to just a couple threads it wasnt enuff to hold it so it shot it out. unfortunately they have a tendancy to do that on these motors...most people reccomend you check the torque on your plugs about every oil change (takes 10-15 minutes and can save a huge headache in the long run)

i wouldnt say anything about you doing the plugs. play stupid.

Thanks for the input, guys.

Yup, was already planning on going that route. Just gonna say that they were the plugs that were put in when the motor was swapped.

i had this happen to me twice on my 98 gt...the first time i took it to the shop i used to go to, said it was a $50 fix, and everything was fine..a week later it happened again, and i was near a ford dealership...$1500 later everything was fixed :( been good sice tho